The unglamorous real-life sequel to Orange Is the New Black, as reported by John Leland in the NYTimes:

Venita Pinckney grew up around Catholic schools and churches, and she thought she knew about nuns. Then a small, gray-haired sister named Teresa Fitzgerald came to fish her out of a Harlem crack house. Ms. Pinckney had been a drug addict for 23 years, a dealer and a prostitute, and had lost both of her children to foster care. She was high at the time.

“She looked past all that,” Ms. Pinckney said of the nun. “She must’ve hugged me for two hours.”

Sister Tesa, as she is known, helped Ms. Pinckney get into a residential drug program, then gave her a job and a room and helped her get her children back…

Twenty-seven years ago, answering an open call from an older nun, she started a home for children whose mothers were in the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Last year she was honored by the White House.

Now, on a drizzly May afternoon, she walked the battered streets of her expanding domain: three apartment buildings, three thrift stores, a day care center, an after-school program, a job-training program, a group home for women with children, a food pantry, a mentoring program. Three more communal homes, including one where she lives, dot nearby neighborhoods.

In each of the buildings, nearly every woman, whether resident or staff member, is an ex-convict. They are former murderers, drug dealers, embezzlers, smugglers, burglars and addicts. And for many, it was Sister Tesa who turned their lives around, often after they failed on the first or second try…

“Women get overlooked because they’re such a small part of the prison population, and they don’t commit the crimes that make headlines,” said Georgia Lerner, executive director of the Women’s Prison Association, a nonprofit advocacy and service organization.

“But it matters a lot when a woman goes to prison,” Ms. Lerner added. “If a father goes to prison, usually the mother takes care of the kids. If a mother goes to prison, there might be no one to take the kids.”…

@SiubhanDuinne: Heck, even fifty (or probably a hundred) years ago, the Catholics I grew up with always drew a line between the nuns as part of the community, and the priests who, even at their most “beloved”, always considered themselves as above us mere parishioners!

@SiubhanDuinne: While I see your point and understand it, as fate would have it I’m somewhat friendly from way back with someone who was elevated (not sure of the right canonical term) to the post of bishop fairly recently, and is probably the kindest, humblest and most dedicated person I know. There are people, even in those positions, who sincerely attempt to emulate what they believe was the path of Christ.

I obviously don’t know your own bishop friend, and I will take your word for it that he is a good and kind and Christlike person. I was thinking more of the typical USCCB type. I’m quite sure there are some terrible nuns as well, but in the aggregate, from what I know, they are more likely to follow the precepts laid out in the Sermon on the Mount than are the priests and hierarchy.*

*That seems, maybe, to be changing, a little, under Pope Francis. “By your works shall you be known.”

@SiubhanDuinne: I’m not saying he’s representative. I wish he were. I know that those who are terrible, are really terrible, and that hurts many people profoundly. But those I know who are in the hierarchy (and I know and/or am friends with a not inconsiderable number of priests and more than one bishop) skew far, far more good than bad.

Anecdata, I know, and not necessarily a popular view around here, but so be it. Presented simply as one person’s perspective.

@Corner Stone: I spent twelve years in parochial school, I’m not gonna swear in front of a nun!

The other reasons women get sent to jail in modern America seem to involve violent self-defense, having family members with drug problems (your idiot couch-surfing cousin gets busted & the cops find his stash in your public-housing apt), and parenting while poor (neglect/abuse, sometimes very serious, sometimes stuff a suburbanite wouldn’t be ticketed for, like a toddler getting out of the house & wandering the neighborhood). They haven’t managed to make it illegal just to be poor in America, but they’re sure working hard to do so…

This seems pertinent to this story. I just came across this point, and realize I hadn’t thought of this in regards to the legalization of marijuana in this way.

Here are white men poised to run big marijuana businesses, dreaming of cashing in big—big money, big businesses selling weed—after 40 years of impoverished black kids getting prison time for selling weed, and their families and futures destroyed. Now, white men are planning to get rich doing precisely the same thing?”

Francis seems to embrace the spirit of Vatican Council II and Sisters like Tessa. his stance seems to have angered less Christian Christians:

A Tea Party candidate running for office in Oklahoma has appeared to endorse the practice of stoning gay people to death.

Last year, Scott Esk, who is in the race to represent the 91st district in the State House, responded to a friend’s Facebook post about the Pope’s stance on gay people by copying and pasting Bible verses including Leviticus 20:13, which describes homosexuality as “detestable” and demands gay people be “put to death”.

When asked by another Facebook user whether he supported executing homosexuals by stoning, Mr Esk replied: “That goes against some parts of libertarianism, I realise, and I’m largely libertarian, but ignoring as a nation things that are worthy of death is very remiss.”

Women like this nun make me appreciate just how shallow the faith was that I was born and raised in.

Christianity isn’t supposed to be about saying a magic prayer and showing up once a week for services while voting Republican because abortion and teh gay. It’s supposed to be about remembering the outcasts, the rejected, the hurting, the sick, the prisoners, and getting your hands dirty.

In point of fact, I imagine the great majority of priests are in the good (or at least not-bad) category. It’s sad that a small number of them, through their own venality or worse, have put such a blight on pretty much the entire priesthood.

@Anne Laurie: Oh yes, I grew up in an Irish Catholic community (MA and PA) and the nuns were the anchor of our primary schools and brothers in high school. Priests were mostly but not always there. But the bishops…oh give me a break…they were disgusting types.

Sister Elaine Roulet was another nun who was very involved with the women of Bedford Hills Prison. She is an amazing woman, now very old and frail, who served that community heart and soul but with a shrewd, practical, wisdom.

@some guy: Scott Esk, the guy who advocated stoning gay people, seems like he’s got a lot of problems. Check out this previous thread on the story. In the comments you’ll see links to and discussion of various things on his website–Vitamin B-17 (laetrile), how he didn’t know Log Cabin Republicans existed–and excerpts from his seven (or more) year long divorce case, which includes requirements he undergo anger management classes, supervised visits with his kids, and his attempt to claim he was broke to get out of paying court fees.

He seems like a mess and I feel really sorry for his kids. They’ve been required to go to counseling, probably because this divorce is so awful for them.

@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Just think on this — their star player has played his entire career, 17 years now, for the same coach and the same team, winning now five championships during that period.

@Corner Stone: Having played something can certainly help one’s understanding of it, but so can years of watching and thinking about it. My mom has been a baseball fan since she was a kid. She can’t play at all, but she knows the game and almost instinctively knows what should happen in any given situation.

Baseball is a dad thing for me. I grew up in Chicago and my dad would take me to baseball games. And of course if the white sox or the cubs were in the world series, the nuns would bring a TV into the classroom so we could all watch the game.

My mom was a cubs fan, my dad was a sox fan. Being a daddy’s girl, I of course liked the white sox.

Two of my mother’s cousins were nuns in the Pacific Northwest (one still is, the other one passed away a few years ago sadly). They were involved teaching, in nursing and later the administration of the local Catholic hospitals and running low-income housing for the homeless and elderly. Two truly incredible ladies.

I was also told a couple of times growing up about how one of the sisters had been arrested for lying in front of a train carrying nuclear warheads. I always presumed that this was a garbled or exaggerated family story… until a couple of years ago when, out of curiosity, I put her name into Google and, sure enough, up the story popped from the early 1980s. I shall have to ask her about it the next time we meet…

@WaterGirl: Do you really like it? I want to go see a baseball game soon. It seems very long, but with exciting moments when they’re throwing the balls around. When someone has hit the ball and they’re all doing the throwing so they can have an out. I so want to go see it. Maybe I will find I really enjoy the sport. Do you think it’s worth seeing the pro ball teams play or do you think a know-nothing like me would be better off just watching a good minor team? I’ve read up on the basics, so I can’t wait to see how it all gets put together.

They’re still playing now, right? I mean, they were reporting about hockey last week and I thought that was simply a winter game. It seems confusing knowing what sport is in season

@WaterGirl: Mom’s baseball love came from being a daddy’s girl. She listened to Milwaukee games with her dad throughout each summer of her childhood. He taught and thus was able to listen to games during the summer.

Me, however, dad and I hiked. rode bikes, backpacked, and dabbled in climbing. I climbed my first mountain (Mt. Woodring) the summer I turned ten; it wasn’t a technical climb, but is was me, my dad, and his dad. One of the only compliments I have heard my grandfather give me – he didn’t do compliments – was that he was amazed at my stamina and ability to just keep slogging up the slope. God, I loved that climb.

@ruemara: Baseball goes on forever. Starts in early spring with spring training and then opening day happens in early April usually. World Series is in October. So a really, really long season. You’ll have plenty of time to catch a game, whether you choose minor league or the big leagues.

Minor league baseball can be fun because the tickets are cheaper and that means families can go and so there are non-baseball activities for everyone. That happens at major league games too but tickets are usually more and the games are in a bigger stadium with associated higher prices for food and other stuff.

For me, the point of going to a game is the entire experience. From the guys selling beer and peanuts to the seventh inning stretch to actually watching the game. It’s all part of the experience.

@ruemara: I grew up seeing games in person at the ball park, so I get bored with baseball on TV. On the other hand, my eyes aren’t as good as they were when I was a young pup, so maybe that ship has sailed for me with live baseball from the cheap seats.

It’s definitely baseball season. Some people think watching baseball is like watching grass grow, so I have no idea whether it would be a thing for you or not. For me it’s all about the warm fuzzies and the memories from childhood.

@ruemara: Many of the minor league baseball parks give very good value for the money, and if they are the AAA club, you are likely to see players who will be in the major leagues shortly, or maybe were already there and are recovering from injury or something. The quality of play, particularly from the POV of a casual fan, will not be much different.

@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): My dad’s dad, who was the only decent son of a bitch amongst a lot of really vicious harpies, never criticized a god damned thing myself or my sister did. He took us fishing, equally, out in his flat bottom boat and never seemed to mind one way or the other whether we ever even bothered to try and catch anything.
That old man was too good for the motley assholes he had to put up with.

@ruemara: Hockey just ended with the a California team winning the Stanley Cup. This is wrong for many reasons.

@WaterGirl: She’s still around, and maybe I’ll just give it to her for her birthday.

@Corner Stone: My two grandfathers, both assholes in their own way and at the same time both admirable people in their own way, treated their grandchildren differently. Dad’s dad, the one from the climb, actually paid me two compliments, the one about the climb, and the fact that, after I went into the army and got commissioned, he told me stories about WWII and military life that he didn’t tell anyone else (except, perhaps, his brothers who had also been through what he had). The other one was a machine shop teacher who saw himself as a master in a craftsman’s guild who had an obligation to teach his craft to future generations. I could read a micrometer and set up a drill press for a job by the time I was nine.

@Gin & Tonic: That flew right over my head! And maybe we didn’t have to be in the world series, because I was in school in the 60s, and we got to watch the world series more than one year. Maybe nuns were just baseball fans?

@WaterGirl: I was very lucky on grandparents. I lost the first one when I was 26. Then two more in five years, but the last one was around until I was 48 and she was 91. She voted for Obama both times ( the first one, she did say “I voted for the black fella.”) Hell, I knew two great grandparents. In both cases, I preferred my grandmother to her mother.

@WaterGirl: My other grandmother vote twice. Once, just after she married, for FDR, my grandfather was appalled that she voted the ‘wrong” way and never took her to the polls again (she didn’t drive)(he also voted for every school levy on principle; his kids had been educated with other people’s money; he needed to pass that on). The second time was when I drove her to the polls to vote for Clinton in 1992 after my grandfather had died. He was the teacher/mentor one. The other grand father was an FDR, pro-union Dem (he was the one involved in the climb).

Mr. Obama is having a seriously good year. In fact, there’s a very good chance that 2014 will go down in the record books as one of those years when America took a major turn in the right direction.

First, health reform is now a reality — and despite a shambolic start, it’s looking like a big success story. Remember how nobody was going to sign up? First-year enrollments came in above projections. Remember how people who signed up weren’t actually going to pay their premiums? The vast majority have.

…

Then there’s climate policy. The Obama administration’s new rules on power plants won’t be enough in themselves to save the planet, but they’re a real start — and are by far the most important environmental initiative since the Clean Air Act. I’d add that this is an issue on which Mr. Obama is showing some real passion.

…

Oh, and financial reform, although it’s much weaker than it should have been, is real — just ask all those Wall Street types who, enraged by the new limits on their wheeling and dealing, have turned their backs on the Democrats.

Put it all together, and Mr. Obama is looking like a very consequential president indeed…

@Violet: Esk’s divorce was final in 2009. Domestic cases are kept open until all minor children are grown. The last 5 years aren’t the divorce, they are Esk continually asking the court to ignore his long history of violence and lousy parenting and allow him to see the children outside of the supervised facility. And lots and lots of psych evaluations which apparently all showed he hadn’t changed.